


To Break Your Heart

by Joodiff



Category: The Avengers (TV)
Genre: Adult Content, F/M, Reconciliation, Reunions, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-05
Updated: 2013-12-05
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:32:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joodiff/pseuds/Joodiff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometime after the "New Avengers" episode "K Is For Kill", Steed and Mrs Peel meet in London for a meal, but can they really more forward into the future together? Written circa 1999. (Some adult content - don't like, don't read.) Enjoy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Break Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of the "Avengers" stories that I wrote in the late 'nineties and which used to be available via my former "Steedophilia" website. I recently dug it out again to share. Reading it back years after writing it, I guess there's stuff I'd change and grammatical/formatting errors I'd correct, but that seemed a bit like cheating, so here it is straight from the original document. Forgive any mistakes and enjoy. Or not. ;)

**DISCLAIMER:** I own nothing

* * *

**To Break Your Heart**  

by Joodiff

* * *

 

_“So sorry, I never meant to break your heart...”_

“Kayleigh” - Marillion

 

                _Why did I ever leave you?_ The question echoed through my mind again and again as I sat in the restaurant playing the elegant games of pretence that had once seemed so essential. I could hardly bear to look away from him. Perhaps I was afraid that if I did, when I looked back he’d be gone. I wasn’t really listening to whatever it was he was saying about his recent trip to Paris, I was simply absorbing the sound of his voice. A shade deeper than it had once been, that voice, a shade throatier, but still unmistakably Steed’s voice. I was certain he had changed less than I had over the last decade. Physically, at least. He had been in his early forties then, and now, ten years later, it was Steed who was having the last laugh. Now I was nearly forty, and feeling every day of it, and he... Well, he hadn’t changed very much at all. He was still a damnably handsome man, and the grey brindling his dark hair only gave him an air of eminence. The years are kinder to men than they are to women.

 

                He did look good. The dark suit was impeccably tailored to flatter him, emphasising the wide shoulders and the remarkably slim waist. Astonishingly, he wasn’t nearly as stocky as he had been then. He looked remarkably fit and healthy for a man in his early fifties. The moment I had seen him walk into the restaurant I had been struck by his puissance. Tall, broad-shouldered, ruthlessly well-groomed. Elegant. Real. No phantom of memory or half-remembered dream, but as real and vibrant as he had ever been.

 

                “One of us,” that quiet, cultured voice said mildly, “is somewhere else.”

 

                I had been staring at him without hearing a single word he’d said. Guilty and a little flustered, I reached for my wine glass. “I’m sorry, Steed. What were you saying about Paris?”

 

                He shrugged his wide shoulders negligently. I’d always had a penchant for those shoulders. Steed had been an oarsman in his youth, captain of the rowing team, and it still showed. Distractingly, I could remember exactly how those shoulders felt under my palms. Soft, fine skin over hard, tempered muscle.

 

                He said, “It’s not important. Most of it is classified, anyway. So, tell me, how is Knight Industries nowadays?”

 

                How could I tell him the truth? That technology had advanced so far and so fast that we were struggling to keep up? That Knight Industries had only just survived the last year because it’s shareholders had shored it up? I had too much pride to let him know the truth. I looked him in the eye and replied, “Fine. There are some very interesting contracts out for tender that we intend to bid for. Electronic systems for the MOD, that sort of thing.”

 

                Steed looked straight back at me. Disconcerting how intense those light eyes could be. I’d almost forgotten. “Jolly good.”

 

                He knew I was lying. I could see it in his eyes. Knew I was lying, and was too gentlemanly to contradict me. Well, what did it matter, anyway? We were having dinner for old times’ sake after a decade of silence, and when the evening ended, I probably wouldn’t see him again for another ten years. If at all. However real he was, sitting there opposite me, he was still a ghost from the past. Just a man I once knew. An ex-lover that I had left behind long, long ago. A touch of depression settled over me.

 

                Delicately, he asked, “And Peter...?”

 

                It had taken him over an hour, but he’d finally said it. I wasn’t sure how he managed not to choke on my ex-husband’s name. Genial and insouciant John Steed might have been, but he’d cared deeply about me. Too deeply, perhaps. I’d had a long, long time to contemplate the bitter ironies of fate. There was nothing new about the gnawing pain of regret and contrition. I managed a brittle, “The divorce was... equable.”

 

                “I see.”

 

                Steed wasn’t giving anything away. But then, had he ever? Hadn’t part of him always stood aloof? Perhaps that was one of the reasons why... No, I told myself firmly. It was wrong to try and foist the blame and the responsibility for what had happened onto Steed. He had never, at any point, tried to mislead me, had never made me promises he couldn’t keep, had never let me believe in a mythical future for us. Steed had only ever been honourable, decent and honest. He had never pretended that we were anything more than...

 

                “He’s moved to South Africa,” I said abruptly, not wanting to dwell on thoughts of what things had been like between myself and Steed. “I believe he’s getting married next year.”

 

                “Really?” Polite, but disinterested. Steed didn’t want to know anything more than he had to about Peter. I couldn’t actually find it in my heart to blame him.

 

                The waiter brought our coffee. The meal was over, and very soon we would have to say our goodnights. Our goodbyes. Just a man I once knew...

 

                “What about you?” I asked him. Anything to insulate myself against the brooding silence. “Tell me about this stud farm of yours.”

 

                “Not much to tell, Mrs. Peel. It’s a hobby.”

 

                _Mrs. Peel._ I’d never be able to break him of that habit. I hadn’t been “Mrs. Peel” for years, but that didn’t matter to Steed. I would always be “Mrs. Peel” in his eyes, no matter what happened, no matter how many years rolled past.

 

                _I loved you,_ I thought, _God help me, but I loved you, Steed... and I never realised just how much until it was too late..._ “An expensive hobby, I should imagine.”

 

                “Some might view it as a peccadillo,” he admitted, “but I enjoy it.”

 

                Steed had always loved his horses. Polo in the summer, hunting in the winter. Point-to-pointing on freezing Saturday afternoons. Of course he would enjoy having his own stables, his own stud farm. It seemed that he had survived the last decade better than I had. A big house in the country, his own stud farm, a career he still loved... Oh, yes, Steed had done well for himself. I wished fervently that I could say the same. Somehow the last few years had seemed to be a downward spiral. The big Hampstead house went in the divorce, and the smart Belgravia apartment I had moved into had been sold the year before. I was hardly destitute, but a small one-bedroomed flat on the unfashionable side of Belsize Park wasn’t what I had once envisioned for myself. I wondered if he knew that the John Knight Building was now the headquarters of the Tokashi Corporation.

 

                “Perhaps,” he said suddenly, and he sounded strangely unsure of himself, “you would like to come down to the stud at some point? We could go for a ride across the Downs.”

 

                Sometimes we had gone riding together on a Sunday morning. Hacking across Hampstead Heath, or cantering elegantly along Rotten Row. It had been... fun. How long had it been since anything had been fun?

 

                “I’d like that,” I said, but I didn’t dare actually believe in the sincerity of the invitation.

 

                Steed looked at me from the other side of the table. Funny, those grey eyes that could be so astute, so calculating, so icy, funny how they could sometimes be so soft, so gentle. Steed probably understood better than I gave him credit for. He wasn’t an insensitive man, however bluff and reserved he could sometimes appear. Hadn’t I seen his gentle side on hundreds of occasions? Hadn’t I cried on his shoulder more than once during our... association? Steed could be gentle, and Steed could be kind, but I didn’t want his pity.

 

                “Good,” he said. “We must make a definite arrangement. Next week, perhaps?”

 

                It seemed a lifetime away. I’d waited ten years. What difference would another week make? “That would be lovely.”

 

                We sounded like polite strangers. Perhaps we were.

 

                The moment finally came when we had to leave. Unconsciously courteous, Steed held my jacket for me as I slipped it on. Ever the gentleman. He wouldn’t let me pay my share of the bill, either. There had been a time when I would have known better than to even try. We left the restaurant together, pausing in the doorway as we realised that the earlier drizzle had become solid, unrelenting rain. There wasn’t a taxi in sight. Typical. I had hoped to make as quick and painless a getaway as possible.

 

                Steed was unfurling his umbrella. “Let me walk you to your car, Mrs. Peel. You’ll be soaked through in moments, otherwise.”

 

                “I came by taxi,” I admitted, “which seems to have been a mistake. Ah, well, I expect if I walk up towards Piccadilly...”

 

                He looked utterly scandalised. Why did that begin to surprise me? Reprovingly, he said, “You’ll do no such thing. Allow me to drive you home.”

 

                What else could I do? Refuse and walk away into the downpour? Ridiculous. Sheltering under Steed’s umbrella, I let him usher me down the nearest side street. No sign at all of the Bentley. Disconcerting. Steed and his Bentley had been inseparable. The hours he had spent fiddling with it... I should have known that the Jaguar parked neatly under a blazing street lamp was his. No commonplace XJS, either, but a big, elegant coupe with flared wheel arches and wide tyres. British Racing Green, of course. What other colour could it have been? Steed and his cars.

 

                “Allow me,” he said, and opened the passenger door for me.

 

                Comfortable. Luxurious. The smell of warm leather. I didn’t like to think how much the Jaguar had cost. More than my flat, perhaps. He settled into the driver’s seat and started the engine. A well-bred purr, barely audible, and above it, the faintest whine of a turbo charger. Steed always had liked the big toys. I didn’t say a word as he pulled away from the kerb.

 

                “Belsize Park, isn’t it?” Steed asked.

 

                “Just off Belsize Lane,” I confirmed. Doubtless he could have recited the address in his sleep.

 

                We drove in silence. What he was thinking, I didn’t dare guess. The only thing preying on my mind was whether or not to invite him in for what had once been the traditional night-cap. Would he expect it? I wondered, or would he think it too... forward. I couldn’t remember ever learning any etiquette that dealt with how one was supposed to behave with an ex-lover who had been so thoroughly jilted. I wasn’t sure, either, that I could cope with the idea of allowing him into my flat. Some ghosts didn’t bear disturbing.

 

                “I’ve had a nice evening,” I said, as we neared our destination, “thank you, Steed.”

 

                So inanely polite. “Nice”. What a ridiculous word.

 

                “The pleasure was all mine,” he told me urbanely.

 

                Steed always had been capable of a terrifying degree of charm and urbanity. A thoroughly charming man. Hadn’t everyone said so? Even his enemies had liked him. In an odd, antagonistic sort of way. Urbane but not unctuous, that was Steed. He hadn’t changed. Or, at least, not in some ways. He seemed more... sombre... than I remembered. More staid and respectable. What had happened to the sly, engaging wickedness? To the brash impudence that had been as amusing as it had been infuriating? Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he had changed far more than I realised.

 

                I glanced to my right. The sight of that strong, patrician profile stirred so many memories. Good memories and bad, exciting times and gentle, idle times. Surely I’d known at the time that it had all been ephemeral, that it couldn’t last forever? Of course I had. But I had loved him. I’d had years to regret that. If only I’d been stronger, if only I hadn’t been so impetuous. If only. Two of the cruellest words in the English language.

 

                What else could I have done? I had believed, implicitly, that my husband was dead. I had been so used to the concept of being a widow that I had scarcely thought about it. Life had been good. Then Peter had been found alive and well in the Amazonian jungle, and before I’d had time to adjust to the fact, he’d been back in England and desperate to see me. And I... I’d been excited. Overwhelmed. Overjoyed. It hadn’t crossed my mind that those exultant feelings wouldn’t last, that once the surprise dissipated, things would seem different. No, I’d been young and impetuous, and I’d said goodbye to my lover and driven off with my husband before I’d actually thought the whole thing through. It had been a horrendous mistake. One I’d paid for over and over again.

 

                Subtly, Peter had punished me for the life I’d had in his absence. Punished me with hurt looks and moody silences, punished me with the sweating heat of his body through night after long night, as if every response he could force from me was atonement. Perhaps it had been. So cold, even in his lust, my returned husband, hating me for things that weren’t my fault. So many bitter quarrels, until I barely thought of Steed, let alone risked mentioning his name. Peter had been driven by some compulsion to stamp his mark on me, to assert himself so thoroughly over me that everything I was, he owned.

 

                Steed slowed the car, brought it to a gentle halt at the kerb and switched off the engine.

 

                “Thank you,” I said. It sounded pathetic.

 

                He didn’t say anything, just got out, walked around the car and opened the door for me. It was still raining. A dark, depressing night haunted by ghosts. Steed saved me from my dilemma, saying quietly, “It’s been an absolute pleasure, Mrs. Peel, but now I really must be heading back to the country.”

 

                “Of course.” Empty words.

 

                “Next week,” he said, “You will pay that visit?”

 

                “I’d love to,” I told him, and it was the truth. The painful truth.

 

                “Good. I’ll call your office and we’ll settle a date. Good night, Mrs. Peel.”

 

                “Good night, Steed. Thank you again.”

 

                Ridiculously polite. I walked away, towards the front door of the imposing Victorian building that housed my empty flat. He watched me until I closed the door. A gentleman to his fingertips. Minutes later, when I looked out of my living room window, the Jaguar was gone.

 

                John Steed. Government agent. Buccaneer. Man about town. Horse breeder. It was no great surprise to me to realise that I still loved him.

 

-oOo-

 

                Richard Markham did his best, but Knight Industries was failing. He knew it, I knew it. On paper we were solvent, but all our assets were heavily underwritten, and the money in the bank belonged to our shareholders. Sir John Knight’s dream had faded. I had loved my father and I felt desperately guilty, but it wasn’t my fault. We simply couldn’t compete with the big Japanese companies that could do everything we could do in half the time and at half the cost. We’d tried diversifying, only to find our resources stretched to breaking point. We’d tried cutting back on everything to concentrate on research, but nothing we had tried had done any good. New investors weren’t interested. Knight Industries was dead in the water.

 

                “Gainsworth Holdings,” Richard suggested, tapping the folder he’d put on my desk, “You know Bewlish. He’s always interested in research.”

 

                “He won’t make us another loan,” I told him grimly, “not until he sees some return. What about ViaTech?”

 

                “Over-committed elsewhere.”

 

                “Someone,” I said, frustrated, “somewhere, must be interested. This is an MoD project, for heaven’s sake!”

 

                “Guided missiles,” Richard said mildly, “are out of fashion this season.”

 

                There was something Steed-like about Richard sometimes. Perhaps that was why I’d employed him. I sighed, “So let’s look at our shareholders again.”

 

                There were only, three, really, worth looking at. Simon Hugo, who was, as befitted a self-made man, frighteningly wealthy and terrifyingly cautious, Capstan Limited, a marine concern who had dealt with my father back in the days when Knight Industries had been purely a shipping company, and Lodestone, which was a subsidiary of a subsidiary of the enigmatic Signet Trust. Richard agreed to tout for more cash amongst them all. He wasn’t too proud to go cap-in-hand, even if I was.

 

                The only touch of lightness in a thoroughly depressing day was the telephone call I took just before lunch. Five days on from our cautious, achingly polite dinner date, Steed, calling as promised. Reasoning that Richard could hold the fort better on his own than he could with me hovering nervously in the background, I arranged to go down to Berkshire for lunch the following day. Greylands Estate, no less, not too far from Newbury.

 

                “Old friend, eh?” Richard asked me when I ended the call.

 

                “Something like that.” I admitted.

 

                “Well, if he’s got more than two h’pennies to rub together, invite him to be a shareholder.”

 

                “That,” I said, “isn’t funny.”

 

                And it wasn’t. Not remotely.

 

-oOo-

 

                I hadn’t slept well, and the drive down to Lychford was tedious and slow. The hot weather had continued into September, and the roads were still crowded with people coming back from late holidays. The Berkshire countryside soothed me, though. Royal Berkshire. Mr and Mrs. Windsor kept a delightful little castle remarkably close to the motorway. Newbury became prominent on the roadsigns, and I was driving through Lychford almost before I knew it. A very smart little village. Middle-class. Stockbrokers and their wives. Gone were the farmers and farmhands. Most of them, anyway. On the Newbury road, I found Addiscombe Lane, and halfway down on the right, the imposing gates of Greylands Estate. Quite why it was necessary to have a driveway half a mile long was beyond me.

 

                The house, though, was delightful. Regency, without a doubt. Whitewashed and elegant. Colonnades by the big front door, all that. My old friend certainly had done well for himself. Immaculate grounds, from what I could see, and paddocks with horses grazing in them. Beyond the house I caught a glimpse of outbuildings. The stables, presumably. Steed’s Jaguar was parked on the vast swathe of gravel in front of the house, and next to it, a jaunty little TR7. Bright canary yellow. I wished, suddenly, that I still had my beloved little Elan. I’d loved the Lotus passionately, but Peter hadn’t thought it “suitable”. I’d been driving solid, reliable and thoroughly boring cars ever since.

 

                The girl who answered the door was tall and willowy like a dancer. Blonde. Pretty. She didn’t look unduly surprised when she said, “Mrs. Peel.”

 

                Something about the way she said it told me that she wasn’t a social caller at Greylands. Steed’s latest assistant? Almost certainly. The old scoundrel always did have an eye for the ladies. I murmured something in response, and she said quickly, “I was just leaving. He’s through there.”

 

                Unnecessary of her, because even as I stepped into the open hallway, Steed was walking towards me. I liked the grey suit on him. Steed was a born clothes horse. If he’d ever tired of the Security Service, he could have made a decent living as a tailor’s dummy. His handsome face broke into a smile of greeting that was breathtakingly artless. “My dear Mrs. Peel... punctual as ever. How are you?”

 

                Greetings and farewells, and then I was being led into a big, comfortable room packed with antiques and expensive furniture. The blood red walls were too vibrant for my taste, but somehow they looked right. There was nothing ostentatious about it, but you didn’t have to look hard to see that John Steed was a wealthy man. More than comfortably wealthy, by the look of it. I was doubly glad he hadn’t seen my Belsize Park flat. Riches to rags. Well, not quite, but I was still glad he hadn’t seen it. I was hardly a pauper, but my circumstances had changed over the years. Steed’s house only served to remind me of it.

 

                “A drink?” He suggested, “It is after noon, after all.”

 

                Funny, it was only in hindsight that I realised that Steed had been a hard drinker. Very rarely had he ever been the worse for drink, but once midday had been and gone, he hadn’t thought anything of having a brandy here and a whisky there. I hadn’t noticed it at the time. Attitudes changed, but apparently Steed remained the same. I’d seen him put back a bottle of wine, a couple of brandies and a goodnight Scotch and not be remotely unsteady on his feet. Well, for me, at least, those days had gone. I shook my head, “No, thanks, Steed. I’m afraid I rarely drink anything in the daytime nowadays.”

 

                A slightly askance look and, “Very sensible, my dear. Tea? Coffee? Lunch will be another hour, I’m afraid.”

 

                We drank tea and exchanged polite words, and then he led me outside to tour the stables of which he was so proud. Justifiably so. I wasn’t a great judge of horseflesh, but I could recognise a thoroughbred when I saw one. I could see his passion for the enterprise, too. Dignified enthusiasm, but enthusiasm nonetheless. I wondered if he had thought about retiring from the Service and devoting himself to the stud full-time. It seemed unlikely. Steed had spent his entire adult life doing the same job in one shape or form, and I doubted he would adapt well to an ordinary, mundane existence.

 

                “Forgive me,” he said in the end, “I do tend to rattle on, don’t I?”

 

                I shook my head, “Nothing to forgive. There are far worse hobbies to entertain.”

 

                A very distinctive snort of amusement. “True. Oh... Come with me, Mrs. Peel.”

 

                He took me by the elbow. Nothing could have prepared me for the jolt that shot up my arm and into my shoulder when he laid a hand on me. Something momentarily fluttered in the pit of my stomach. Trying hard to ignore the sensation, I let him lead me across the cobblestones to yet another long, whitewashed outbuilding. He let me go to drag open the huge double doors. September sunlight flooded the darkness, glinting and flashing on polished chrome and shining brass. The vintage Bentley’s dark green coachwork gleamed like a mirror.

 

                Ten years distilled down to nothing. Seeing that big, distinctive car again... So many memories came flooding back. I didn’t dare try and speak, and I was glad he was looking at the Bentley and not at me. There was a lump in my throat. What had I done on that awful day so long ago? Traded my kind, gentle, eccentric lover and his ageing Bentley for a cold-hearted, haughty man who hadn’t thought it seemly for me to drive a sports car? Memories. Conflicts.

 

                “Poor old girl met with a bit of an accident recently,” Steed said, running a hand along one of the front wings, “but I had her restored. Seemed criminal not to, somehow.”

 

                He evidently noticed my silence, because he turned to look at me, a touch quizzically, “Mrs. Peel...?”

 

                I turned my back on him and walked towards the paddock beyond the gate. Perhaps it was rude of me, but it was better than dissolving into tears.

 

-oOo-

 

                “It bothers you, doesn’t it?” He said, leaning on the post and rail fence, looking intently at the mare grazing in the middle of the paddock. “The past?”

 

                Sooner or later we would have to talk about it. I couldn’t look at him. “That surprises you?”

 

                “No.”

 

                Monosyllabic. There were times when Steed’s flippant eloquence deserted him. My fingers tightened on the wooden rail. “I made a mistake, Steed, and we both know it. But nothing can change what happened. I wish it could, but there’s no way back.”

 

                “I wasn’t altogether surprised when I heard about the divorce,” he said. “People change.”

 

                “They do.”

 

                He straightened up. “Lunch must be just about ready.”

 

-oOo-

 

                It was one of the most depressing meals I’d ever had to sit through. Now we weren’t only being polite with each other, but polite and wary. Too much water had passed under the bridge. I didn’t even know why I was there. I had loved him... I still loved him... but nothing could repair the damage I’d done years before. I started to realise that I’d never even started to forgive myself for the way I’d behaved. Poor Steed. He had found out about Peter’s homecoming from the newspapers, and I hadn’t even tried to explain, hadn’t even attempted to lessen the sting. I’d been so excited, so caught up in the excitement of everyone else - Peter’s friends and family - that I’d been blind to the one person I should have been concentrating on. Any other man might well have hated me for the way I’d behaved. Not Steed. Steed was too good-hearted, too noble. It would almost have been easier if he had demonstrated some malice, some antipathy.

 

                In the end, I made my excuses and left early. It was cowardice, and we both knew it, but I simply couldn’t bear the strained atmosphere any longer. I left him standing in the doorway of his big, grand house, watching me driving away. It was getting to be a habit, driving away from Steed. I didn’t intend to do it again, because I had no intention of seeing him again. It was too painful, too emotionally exhausting. I went back to London, and unable to bear the thought of going back to an empty flat, I went to Knight’s offices in Lombard Street.

 

                Richard greeted me enthusiastically. “Good news, Emma. I’ve got the money for the Hunter Project.”

 

                Glad to think about something else, I asked, “Where on earth from?”

 

                “Lodestone. Their manager liked the sound of the deal straight away. We can tender as soon as we like.”

 

                “How much?” I asked him, a touch cynical.

 

                “Fifty thousand up front, more whenever we’re ready.”

 

                There was a proverb about looking gift horses in the mouth. Something, though, made me want to drag this particular gift horse straight to the vet for a full examination. Why on earth would a company like Lodestone be suddenly so very accommodating? I voiced the question darkly.

 

                Richard shrugged, “They say they’re interested in getting involved in more defence work. War is more profitable than peace, you know that.”

 

                There had to be a catch. There always was.

 

-oOo-

 

                “Lodestone?” George Mitchell asked, looking vaguely bewildered. I had the distinct feeling he was simply glad I wasn’t asking him for money. “Part of the Signet group. Thoroughly reputable.”

 

                “If a little... enigmatic?”

 

                “Tax dodge?” George suggested. “They usually are. Not exactly illegal. Not exactly legal, either. A grey area, one might say. Perhaps the parent company needs to spend some money, fast?”

 

                “Richard’s over the moon, but I’m not altogether convinced...”

 

                “You’re your father’s daughter, Emma. You always have been. You’ve dealt with Lodestone before, haven’t you?”

 

                “We have, yes. But not on this scale. They’re shareholders, but they’ve always been remarkably quiet.”

 

                “The Signet Trust,” George told me, “isn’t a very big concern. Lots of subsidiaries, granted, but small operations, all of them. Lodestone itself is nominally a mining company. Someone’s a very shrewd businessman, Emma, with a very shrewd accountant. The money’s been very thinly and evenly spread throughout all the subsidiaries, from what I understand. You know the sort of wheeling and dealing that goes on. The stock market is a hunting ground for all sorts of predators.”

 

                “You’re telling me that Lodestone is simply a front...?”

 

                “Obviously. I daresay money’s being transferred from all over for this deal of yours.”

 

                “Which makes me even less inclined to do business with them.”

 

                “As I see it, they’ve got you over a barrel, Emma. Have them investigated if you’re not happy. You must know someone...?”

 

                “Oh, yes,” I said, thinking of a tall, elegant man in a bowler hat, “I know someone.”

 

-oOo-

 

                I investigated it myself. Frustratingly, I didn’t get very far. I discovered that the Signet Trust did, indeed, have a number of subsidiaries that were plainly companies in name only, but I couldn’t find any trace of anything that was, strictly speaking, illegal. Companies House provided me with the information that the Signet Trust was owned by one Arthur Fenton-Chase, and there, with Mr. Fenton-Chase, the trail went cold. A sixth sense told me that all was not altogether well with the world, but it was late, it was dark, and I didn’t pay myself overtime, so I eventually closed the file and went home.

 

                Steed was waiting for me. Lounging in the chair by the window, idly swinging his umbrella, his bowler perched on his knee. The deadlock was still on when I unlocked the door, so I could only assume that he’d entered through the open window. I couldn’t quite believe it, but there he was, ensconced in my flat as if he belonged there. I stared at him in open-mouthed shock and incredulity. Smattered with outrage.

 

                “Ah, there you are, Mrs. Peel,” he said, getting to his feet, “I wondered if you’d forgotten your way home.”

 

                “What are you doing here?” I asked him, and I could hear the high-pitched note in my voice that was embarrassingly close to hysteria.

 

                “Waiting for you.”

 

                Well, obviously. I should have known better than to ask.

 

                “I think,” he said mildly, “that we should start again. From ‘how wonderful to see you after all this time’.”

 

                There had been times in the past when I’d wondered whether he was certifiably insane. I asked myself the same question again, as I stared at him in blank surprise. He stared calmly back.

 

                I found my voice. “I don’t think it will help.”

 

                “Nonsense.” Steed said with the breezy impatience I remembered so vividly.

 

                ...And suddenly there he was. The Steed I had thought about for years, the Steed who had been impudent, gentle, reckless, incisive, cheerfully recalcitrant, the Steed I had only ever had on a silken leash that he could have snapped without a single thought. My Steed. Steed who had accidentally fallen in love with me and had accepted his fate with philosophical amusement at his own folly. The facade of respectable, middle-aged country gentleman was paper thin, and beneath it he was as restless, unruly and singular as he had ever been. I wanted to throw my arms around him, wanted to hug him, kiss him and never, never let go of him again.

 

                Typically, I settled for, “How wonderful to see you after all this time.”

 

                He laughed. Steed, unless he had changed radically, wasn’t in the habit of laughing very much. He smiled a lot, and his eyes laughed a lot. Sometimes he allowed a deep chuckle, but he very rarely laughed aloud. Not, as they said, good form. Not at all.

 

                “My dear Mrs. Peel,” he said, sounding amused and affectionate, “Where on earth have you been?”

 

                It was that easy. In the end, it was that easy.

 

-oOo-

 

                I slept alone. Given the choice, I wouldn’t have done, but Steed chose to leave, and I didn’t ask him to stay. It was too soon. The ice was broken, but there was still a lot of ground to cover. I slept alone, and I slept deeply. Long and dreamlessly, waking up feeling unusually optimistic and refreshed. I could deal with anything. Lodestone, Arthur Fenton-Chase... anything. I was still in a buoyant mood when I walked into my office. Richard was already there, looking tired and harassed. Sitting in my chair was a ridiculously large and furry teddy bear.

 

                “That,” Richard said with distaste, “was delivered an hour ago by a spotty adolescent. I suppose flowers are too conventional.”

 

                The fair at Middleton. Eleven... twelve years ago? We had been on the way back to London after investigating a group of suspiciously anti-social bird watchers. It had been my idea to stop in the little village and wander through the fair on the green. Steed had looked so incongruous in his immaculate suit and bowler hat that I’d nearly choked laughing. But he’d won me a teddy bear on the rifle range, and for a long, long time it had sat on a chair in my bedroom. Steed had strongly disapproved, and I don’t think he’d been overly upset when it had disappeared in the move between apartments. I had always accused him of tying a brick to it’s stubby legs and throwing it in the Serpentine. He had threatened to send me a furry ear in the post. Silly, gentle games. Lovers’ games.

 

                “Flowers die,” I informed Richard mildly.

 

                “I must tell Fiona that. I doubt she’d take a teddy bear as a substitute.”

 

                _I am a woman,_ I told myself, _who knows a man who sends her teddy bears._ It made me smile. Whether I deserved it or not, the old rogue still loved me. Steed being Steed, couldn’t have settled for simply telling me so. Not when he could send me a huge, ridiculous teddy bear instead. So incongruous.

 

                I picked the furry beast up and held it aloft, “Does he look like a Jonathan to you?”

 

                Richard just sighed. Men. What did they know?

 

-oOo-

 

                “Stop it,” Steed said good-naturedly, stretching his legs out in front of him as we sat on the park bench looking at the ducks. He had his hands in his trouser pockets and his bowler tipped back on his head. In manner, if in nothing else, he seemed about eighteen. An overgrown schoolboy in an expensive suit. “You’ll drive yourself mad if you keep trying to go through it all.”

 

                “It’s important,” I said reproachfully.

 

                “Not to me.”

 

                I glanced sideways at him, then said, “You’ve changed.”

 

                “Penalty of age, Mrs. Peel.”

 

                Like a dog worrying at a bone, I said, “I left you.”

 

                “Yes,” he said mildly, “you did. For your worthless husband, as I remember.”

 

                “Rub salt in the wounds, why don’t you?” I grumbled, but it didn’t hurt. None of it seemed to hurt very much, suddenly. There was that old feeling of regret, of course, but the raw, gnawing pain had gone.

 

                We were both silent for a while. People walked past us as if we weren’t there. No-one even spared us a glance. I looked at Steed again, “We must look like an old married couple, sitting here in silence.”

 

                “Impossible, Mrs. Peel.”

 

                I frowned slightly, vaguely baffled, “Why?”

 

                “Because you wouldn’t marry me if I was the last man left breathing.”

 

                For an intelligent man, Steed could be remarkably stupid sometimes.

 

-oOo-

 

                We had arranged to go out to dinner the following evening, but halfway through the afternoon I got one of those apologetic telephone calls that I’d been so used to back in the ‘sixties. He was terribly sorry, but something had cropped up. No, he wasn’t sure when he would be free, but he would call me as soon as he could. I accepted it with good grace. Well, what else could I do? I knew Steed, and I knew the kind of life he lived. Something had cropped up. Something to do with National Security, no doubt. He didn’t volunteer any details, and I knew better than to ask. I’d signed the Official Secrets Act during those exciting days when I’d been Steed’s unofficial assistant, but my security clearance had been revoked the moment I’d left his side.

 

                He wasn’t with me, but strangely the fact didn’t unsettle me. I had trusted Steed with my life in the past, trusted him to keep me alive in the face of appalling danger. I had always known that however deeply I got myself into trouble, in the end Steed would be there to rescue me, to defend me, to look after me whether I’d wanted him to or not. It had been like having a guardian angel hovering at my shoulder. I had trusted him then, and I still trusted him. He had said he would call, and so he would call. Steed was too honourable to lie to me about something like that. If he hadn’t wanted to have dinner, he would certainly have made a polite excuse, but he wouldn’t have added a lie about telephoning.

 

                I concentrated on the enigma of Lodestone. Richard grew twitchy, wanting to sign the deal, but I held my ground. Knight Industries was still my company, and I still called the shots. We needed money if we were going to tender for the Hunter Project, but I would rather have passed up the opportunity than risk my company and my reputation by entering into some kind of nefarious deal... however innocently. Arthur Fenton-Chase was something of a mystery man, I discovered. A reclusive playboy, if that wasn’t a contradiction in terms, who rarely, if ever, showed his face at business meetings. He did, though, have a manager. Manageress? Felicity McGregor. It took me two days, but I finally secured an appointment with her.

 

                The Signet Trust had two small offices and a reception area in a building in Baker Street. Small, I discovered, but expensively furnished in a starkly modern style that included the sharply angular young woman who seemed to be receptionist, telephonist and secretary all in one. Twenty years old, not any more, and with the kind of figure that would certainly have got her a job on the catwalk. Waiting for Miss McGregor to see me, I tried a subtle interrogation of the secretarial whippet, asking innocently, “Perhaps, if Miss McGregor is busy, I could see Mr Fenton-Chase himself?”

 

                A blank look. “Mr Fenton-Chase isn’t here.”

 

                No great surprise. The girl was pretty, but she wasn’t bright, and she didn’t seem to know very much about anything. Either that, or she was a brilliant actress who was wasted doing an office job. The only useful thing she did tell me was that most of the Signet Trust’s money came from the Middle East. Oil, apparently.

 

                Mysterious Mr Fenton-Chase had good taste in women. Felicity McGregor was probably around my age, but she looked younger. And more elegant. Brunette. Flawlessly beautiful. Unlike the girl behind the reception desk, she was also very astute and very cagey. Polite enough, but canny. We sparred for twenty minutes and all she told me was what I already knew. Yes, Signet owned Lodestone, and several other companies besides. No, she didn’t have anything directly to do with the running of Lodestone. Yes, Signet had interests in the Middle East. No, Mr Fenton-Chase was not available to see me. Defeated, I said my goodbyes.

 

                Steed had sometimes said that I suffered from tunnel vision when it came to Knight Industries. That once I fixed my sights on something, that was it. I had to admit that there was some justification for his opinion. I’d taken it into my head that there was something not right about the Lodestone deal, and I wasn’t prepared to let go of the thought. Well, if I couldn’t get to the bottom of what might be going on, I was certain I knew a man who could. He had more pressing concerns for the moment, I knew, but he would soon telephone, and when he did, perhaps I would ask him for a favour.

 

-oOo-

 

                “Perfectly respectable,” Steed said, refilling my glass before leaning back in his chair, “Oil concessions. There’s nothing untoward there, Mrs. Peel.”

 

                “Lodestone just want to hand Knight Industries all that money out of the goodness of their heart? Well, of course. Why on earth didn’t I realise?”

 

                “You’re too cynical,” he told me, “for a woman of your age.”

 

                “Steed, you used to say that when I was in my twenties. Now I’m nearly forty, it doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

 

                There was a definite bruise shadowing his temple, and I could see bruising and minor abrasions around his knuckles. Someone had hit him, and he’d hit someone back. Extremely hard, by the state of his right hand. Steed always had been quick and dangerous with his fists. He’d learnt to box at Eton, as all young gentleman had in those days. Queensbury rules. He’d been getting into fights ever since, as far as I knew. Slightly bruised, slightly battered, but otherwise he seemed perfectly unscathed. Most men of his age were enjoying their middle years in a more sedentary fashion.

 

                “If you’re concerned,” he said, waving the waiter over, “I’ll make a few inquiries, but I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

 

                “I hope you’re right.” I said, not feeling or sounding convinced.

 

                “Trust me, Mrs. Peel.”

 

-oOo-

 

                “Will you come up,” I said when he switched off the Jaguar’s engine, “for a night-cap?”

 

                “Mrs. Peel, I thought you’d never ask.”

 

                Not for the first time in the last couple of weeks, I felt as if I’d gone back in time. We weren’t walking up the stairs to my old Primrose Hill apartment, true, but otherwise we were doing exactly what we’d done so often before. It was strange, a touch surreal. I unlocked the front door without any sense of fear or concern. Steed had seen my apartment. I had nothing left to hide from him.

 

                Actually, it wasn’t a bad place, and I’d made sure it was thoroughly redecorated to my taste before I’d moved in. It just wasn’t as expensive or spacious as some of the places I’d lived in over the years. I’d lost the fear of feeling embarrassed. Steed didn’t know the details of my finances, but he was shrewd enough and observant enough to have realised that I wasn’t as wealthy as I’d once been. Accepting Lodestone’s money, of course, would be a step towards changing that. Maybe, once I was satisfied that if Steed hadn’t found anything wrong, there was nothing wrong to be found... Maybe then I’d tell Richard to go ahead and clinch the deal.

 

                “Brandy?” I asked rhetorically. I didn’t think for a moment he’d drink anything else at that time of night. He hadn’t changed that much.

 

                “Thank you.”

 

                Standing with my back to the room as I poured the drinks, I knew immediately that he was behind me. He didn’t make a sound, but I knew. I just knew. The soft brush of lips against my shoulder caused such a powerful jolt down my spine that I had no idea how I stopped myself dropping the crystal decanter. It shouldn’t have surprised me, and it didn’t, really, but I couldn’t help the reaction. I froze where I was, decanter in the air.

 

                He turned me round by my elbow, neatly plucked the decanter from my grasp and set it back on the drinks tray. I knew he was going to kiss me, and he did. Tentatively at first, as if he wasn’t sure that I’d allow it, and then with more confidence. Rather belatedly, I entered into the spirit of things, letting my arms slide up around his neck, leaning into him and kissing him back. Sweet deliverance.

 

                It was almost a replay of the first kiss we’d shared. Almost. Except that the first time we’d kissed like that, we’d been standing on a canal towpath under a bridge sheltering from the hammering rain. And I hadn’t been shaking. A little shivery inside, perhaps, but not shaking as if I had a fever. Steed drew back slowly, and I could see his eyes searching for some clue as to how I really felt. Steed was one of those men who wasn’t surprised by anything. If I’d slapped him, he wouldn’t have appeared startled. I didn’t slap him. In fact, I didn’t even think about letting go of him to do anything.

 

                “Steed...” I tried, but the words wouldn’t form. I wanted to apologise to him for everything. For leaving him, for treating him so shabbily, for waiting so long to see him again. For so many things.

 

                “Listen to me,” he said, and his voice was very soft, “for once in your life, Emma, listen to me.”

 

                _Emma._ The last time he’d called me that...

 

                “I’m not going to tell you this again,” he said, and I knew from his tone that he wasn’t joking. “The past is over and done. It’s buried, forgotten. Let go of it.”

 

                He’d treated me as an equal in the days when the idea of equality of the sexes had still been alien to most men, and a joke to most of the rest. He’d never patronised me, never tried to dominate me. I’d been my own woman, not anyone else’s, free to do as I wanted, to make my own decisions and steer the course of my own life. Steed had never tried to suggest that I should behave how he wanted me to behave. We had been perfectly, blessedly equal in most things. Yet, when Steed had wanted to assert himself, he had done so quietly, calmly and inflexibly. And, heaven help me, I had never once argued with him, not when he had used that tone, not when it had become clear that he meant every word he said. Beneath the equality, Steed had governed me like a Czar. A benevolent Czar, maybe, but when Steed had told me to jump, I’d jumped. It hadn’t had anything to do with the fact that he was male, only that he had been so much older and wiser than I had been, for all my sophistication, and so much more experienced. Steed had let me do exactly as I wanted without interfering at all, but he had expected to be obeyed without question when the occasion had merited it.

 

                That had been one of the fundamental differences between Steed and Peter Peel. Peter had wanted to rule me, had done everything in his power to do so, and the more he had shouted and blustered, the more rebellious I’d been. Steed had never had the slightest interest in ruling me, had been singularly disinterested in running my life for me, and yet I would have walked barefoot across hot coals if he’d told me to.

 

                I looked into his eyes, saw the quiet, gentle wisdom reflected there, and slowly nodded my head.

 

                “Good,” he said simply, “Now, perhaps, you’d care to worry about the future instead?”

 

                “Can I worry about the present first?” I asked him in a tiny voice. It was better than crying.

 

                “I don’t think you need to worry about the present,” Steed said smoothly.

 

                Evidently not, from the way he kissed me again. Gentle enough, but with more fire, more urgency. I was quicker on the uptake the second time, responding immediately and hotly. How could the feel of him, the scent of him, the taste of him, still be so familiar after ten years? I buried the fingers of one hand into his dark hair, still so soft, still so dense, caressed the back of his neck with the other hand. I loved him. I adored him. Once upon a time I had been too proud, too concerned with appearing nonchalant and sophisticated to tell him so, but not any more. I would tell him; before the night was out, I would tell him exactly how I felt about him. If he couldn’t accept it, well, at least I would have been completely open and honest with him for the very first time.

 

                It seemed like an eternity, and it seemed like just a heartbeat, but eventually the kiss ended. I felt as though I had goose pimples over every inch of my skin. Damned man always did have that effect on me. How could eyes that pale seem to burn? Fire and ice, those eyes that stared straight into me, cutting through everything to reach the heart of me.

 

                “Tell me to go,” he said, and his voice was throatier than normal, “because if you don’t...”

 

                Steed. My great, gentle, lion-hearted Steed. Real. Wanting me. I shook my head silently.

 

                He stepped back slightly, breaking the close physical contact, took my hand and kissed it gently, turned it over and kissed my palm. I felt the same slight prickle of evening stubble that I’d felt on my cheek, a surprisingly erotic sensation. Almost wonderingly, I touched his face, let my fingers trace the strong, high cheekbone, run down to his square, cleft chin. I wanted to make a minute study of him, wanted to learn again every feature, every tiny distinguishing mark. Steed didn’t move a single muscle, simply stood and let me caress him, his gaze steady, the fire replaced by an astonishing calm. An amazing serenity. He’d always been capable of a serenity that I’d envied. Nervy and volatile one moment, deeply placid and indolent the next.

 

                I’d always refused to believe in fairytales. I’d always been fashionably cynical about handsome princes and happy endings. My faith in pessimistic reality was beginning to fail me.

 

                “Stay with me,” I said. An ambiguous request if ever there was one.

 

                “Depend on it,” Steed said.

 

-oOo-

 

                Mature, civilised people that we were, we managed to sit and have a drink in the living room. We even managed to have half a conversation. Only half, because I don’t think either of us had a clue what we were saying. He could have been telling me every government secret he knew, and I wouldn’t have noticed. I just kept looking at him, kept seeing all the tiny details I’d half forgotten, like the way his heavy cufflinks gleamed in the light, the way he held his head when he was talking, the way that however spruce and neatly groomed he was, there was always one lock of hair that refused to remain ordered. I couldn’t have studied him more closely if he’d been a specimen under a microscope.

 

                The bedroom door behind me was beginning to exert a relentless pull. I didn’t really know what we were waiting for, or how long we could go on waiting. We were civilised, both of us. Civilised to our fingertips, but it wasn’t as if we didn’t already know exactly what we...

 

                “Come to bed with me,” I said abruptly, getting to my feet and interrupting whatever it was he was saying about Greylands. I’d never entirely lost my impetuous streak.

 

                One dark eyebrow raised elegantly. “Request or command?”

 

                I wasn’t in the mood for Steed’s clever, bantering games. “Whichever you prefer.”

 

                “Far be it from me to argue with a lady,” he said, and stood up.

 

                Steed was tall, an inch or two over six foot, and when he stood up, he almost dominated the room. Tall and square, wide-shouldered. I was tall myself, and yet I’d always felt diminutive standing next to Steed. I knew better than anyone that he wasn’t actually quite as stocky as he looked fully dressed, but he did look big and powerful, standing in the centre of my little living room. Wordlessly, I held out a hand to him. There was no point in playing coy games of pretence. We’d been lovers in the past, and we knew each other very well indeed, regardless of how long we’d been apart. We knew each other intimately. Very, very intimately. There was no part of him I hadn’t explored lingeringly and often. I knew he had a fencing scar on his wrist, knew he had a mole on his hip, an inoculation mark on his upper arm. Perhaps he’d accrued a few more scars in the intervening years, but I knew all the old ones.

 

                I knew he purred like a contented cat if his shoulders were massaged, knew he hated to be tickled, loved to be stroked. I knew when he was fiercely aroused his eyes seemed to darken, knew that his voice deepened and roughened. I knew Steed, and he knew me. It was that simple.

 

                He took my hand, as if he knew I wanted to lead him. So strong, his fingers, and yet his grip was gentle. Like a tiger on a leash, he followed me, letting me lead him across the room and through the bedroom door. A potentially dangerous animal on a silken thread, trained, maybe, but not tamed.

 

                I shut the door. Shut the world out. There was nothing that was as important as the scene being played out between us. Nothing.

 

                Steed reached up to pull his tie loose, his eyes never leaving mine. He knew me. Knew that I had always loved to watch him undress, had always found it incredibly arousing to see that hard, sleek body being slowly revealed. There was nothing pretentious about the way he stripped. He simply took his clothes off, and nothing could have been more erotic to watch. His jacket and waistcoat joined his tie on the chair under the window. He continued to gaze steadily at me as he unfastened his cufflinks. I just leaned against the closed door and watched him. He started to unbutton his shirt, exposing a broad stretch of remarkably muscular flesh. Steed was still a field agent, and field agents were required to stay fit and active until they retired, whatever their age.

 

                I loved that distinctive diamond of dark hairs on his chest. Excitingly masculine and aesthetically pleasing. Very male. I loved the way the hairs formed a narrow trail that led the eye naturally downwards to the waistband of his tailored trousers. He dropped his shirt onto the chair, and I saw the taut play of muscles under his skin. The young Steed had been a formidable athlete, and he had the trophies to prove it. I loved his body, loved the economical lines of it, the utilitarian structure of muscle and bone. The muscle was there, and it was hard and seasoned, but he was elegantly proportioned, too. If the years had changed that body at all, they had simply weathered it, hardened it even more. I’d seen men ten, twenty years younger in worse physical condition.

 

                He’d stopped undressing. I’d been so caught up in my scrutiny that I hadn’t realised it. The grey eyes were laughing at me, not unkindly, and there was a distinct note of amusement in his voice as he said, “Scientific interest, Mrs. Peel?”

 

                “Naturally.”

 

                Without even thinking about it, we’d fallen back into the old pattern. Were we, after all, exactly the same people we had once been? Beneath the layers of time and experience? In some ways, we were, I was sure of it. I remembered perfectly what it had been like to be a spirited young woman in love with a dashing, elegant older man. They said the age gap narrowed the older you got. Not that either of us had ever been particularly bothered by the difference in our ages. It was true, I thought. At nearly forty, I felt closer to him in age and experience than I had when I’d been in my twenties.

 

                It was a mistake, though, to start thinking about my age. Steed hadn’t changed very much, he’d got a little greyer, a little mellower, but that was about it. I had changed more than he had. Physically. I was still fit myself, but I knew I wasn’t the lithe, athletic young woman he remembered. A touch of vanity and insecurity suddenly unsettled me. I could suddenly understand those women who refused to undress with the lights on.

 

                “You’re beautiful,” he said, and suddenly he was there in front of me, as if spirited there, “Quite, quite beautiful.”

 

                Why did I have to be in love with a man who was clairvoyant?

 

                “I’m nearly forty,” I grumbled, looking down at his chest in a vain attempt to conceal my embarrassment. There were a few grey hairs there, too, gleaming dully in the overhead light.

 

                “Then I hope and pray your arithmetic’s bad, Mrs. Peel, or you might work out just how old that makes me.”

 

                Typical Steed. Too clever by half. But I adored him for it.

 

                Cautiously, as if the contact might burn me, I put a hand on his bare chest. He was warm and solid, and I could feel him breathing. When I looked up, he kissed me, not deeply this time, but lightly and mischievously, a teasing kiss that was perfectly calculated to make me dizzy. It worked. I forgot about things as ridiculous as a few birthdays here and there, and concentrated on trying to kiss him properly. Which, of course, necessitated winding my fingers back into his hair to hold his head. He was so warm, so real. I couldn’t get over how real he was. I’d lived with a ghost for so long that I’d almost forgotten the truth of him. I kissed him, he kissed me back, and all my fears and worries were utterly meaningless.

 

                As if from nowhere, I could feel him. Feel his arousal, an imperative hardness pressing against me, quite definite, even through our clothing. It was almost a shock. Almost. Male heat, male desire, all distilled into that solid shape. I could hold his head just as well with one hand. I ran a palm down over his shoulderblades, his back, let it travel round to sneak between us, searching for it. Even through his trousers I could identify his contours perfectly. Steed had evidently decided that I was at an unfair advantage, because as I was making my first exploration, he was unbuttoning my blouse. I had no intention of trying to stop him. His mouth left mine, began to hunt over my neck, heading for my throat.

 

                I didn’t want to stand up any more. I especially didn’t want to fumble with constricting clothing any more, but I got a hand inside his trousers before I urged him back towards my neatly made bed. Absolutely rigid, his flesh. Rigid and warm, throbbing slightly with a life of it’s own. The bed was the catalyst. We were pulling clothes off before we were halfway down onto the mattress. I wanted to see him, but it was too late. We were wound together into one naked creature before I had a chance to gaze at him. It didn’t matter. I could feel his penis pressing against my stomach, hard and arrogant, desperately needy. Steed was kissing my breasts, tonguing one nipple as he stroked the other, and his free hand was roaming my body quickly, greedily. Instinctively, I parted my thighs, freely allowing him access to all the places I wanted him to touch.

 

                Erotic insanity. Heat, musk and desire. I wanted him, he wanted me. The hand between my thighs was promising so much, and all I could do was beg him for it. Beg him for what he was so desperate to give. Later, there would be time for gentle, sensuous exploration; later there would be time for tenderness and slowness. Later.

 

                I was recklessly, heedlessly aroused. He could have done just about anything to me, and I would have demanded more. I didn’t want to wait, didn’t want anything but the feel of him deep, deep inside me.

 

                “Now...” I said, a hoarse plea, “Now, Steed...”

 

                Steed was past bantering with me, past teasing me. He reached down, positioning himself with impatient speed. I felt it, felt him. Felt the pressure of the blunt head against me. If he hadn’t pushed his hips forward, I would have bucked up at him to force him inside me. I’d forgotten how big he was. Or perhaps I simply hadn’t had a man for too long. Either way, I felt every inch of him driving into me, and I gloried in it. When he was there, deeply embedded inside me, I remembered him. Remembered the feel of him perfectly. Any memory I’d retained of Peter, or of anyone else, was completely and instantly erased. Steed was the man I belonged with. Belonged to. Steed whose body fitted mine so perfectly, as if we’d been sculpted from one piece of marble. Steed who still loved me, whatever I done.

 

                For a moment, neither of us moved. It was almost as if we’d found an equilibrium that could be eternal. As if we’d found a plateau to dwell upon forever. Nothing had ever been more completely right. Weight on his elbows, he was looking down at me. I knew that feral look in his eyes. But I knew the love that I saw there, too.

 

                “No more games,” he said enigmatically, his voice low and husky, remarkably quiet, “No more, Emma.”

 

                I was impressed by his ability to speak. I didn’t seem capable of very much more than a breathy sigh.

 

                Steed started to move, and I moved with him. We’d danced this dance a thousand times. More. Time didn’t matter, the dance was the same. We’d learnt it a long, long time ago, and it seemed that neither of us had forgotten it. We knew what we liked, both of us. It was a dance, a dance where one of us led for a moment before switching. As a performance, it would have merited high marks for both flair and technical expertise. But then we’d had a lot of practice. I arched against him, forcing him deep, raised my legs to lock them around his slim hips, and the dance went on.

 

                “You’re beautiful,” he said again, and I forgave him his breathlessness. “So very, very beautiful...”

 

                When he stepped up the pace, I knew it would soon be over for both of us. I was already on an ecstatic slope with the summit in sight. I was nearing that point where I could almost predict how many thrusts it would take before I lost control. I didn’t think he could pound into me any faster, but somehow he managed it. I could feel the sweat running down his back, could hear his harsh, fast breathing, could feel the wildness in him. I was glowing. Sensation was draining out of every part of me to concentrate in one wonderful, secret place. Steed threw his head back, the muscles in his neck braced taut, and his body seemed to be driving itself. Short, urgent thrusts, irregular and tight.

 

                He was there. I knew it before he did. I knew him so well. Steed was there, and I wasn’t far behind him. He shouted out, a sound choked off before it was properly voiced. I felt it, felt it in the sharp motions of his body, felt it in the sudden rush of liquid fire deep inside me. It was the impetus I needed, and before I consciously knew it, my body was responding to his, contracting round him, seizing him, making him part of me. I cried out, he cried out. Both of us caught by the same force, both of us heaving and shaking. I hadn’t felt anything like it for a long, long time. I was still shuddering when he collapsed onto me. I welcomed his weight, tightened my arms and legs around him, as if I could meld us into a single entity.

 

                “I love you,” I said. I didn’t think about it, didn’t rationalise it, I just said it. I’d never said it to him before. Never.

 

                Conventionally, he should have said “I love you, too”, but then, Steed never had been a very conventional man. He simply tightened his hold on me until I began to fear my bones would break. Held me so tightly that it hurt. I wasn’t going to complain. I could feel his damp head burrowed into my shoulder, could feel him still shaking. _I love you, I love you,_ echoing over and over in my mind. Hadn’t I always loved him? Of course I had. Always.

 

                Steed had turned my young life upside down. I had never met a man like him. Had never know a man so captivating and so impudent, a man who could be breathtakingly insolent and impossibly charming almost in the same breath. A peacock of a man, a swaggering buccaneer, but incredibly down to earth in so many ways. I simply hadn’t been able to resist him. And I had tried. In the beginning, I had tried, sensing the danger he represented.

 

                I stroked his hair gently, suffused with a tenderness that almost overwhelmed me with it’s depth. For the first time in years, I felt I was where I belonged.

 

-oOo-

 

                For at least the first couple of days, it was an insanity that ruled us completely. Apart for so long, once we were reunited, it seemed as if we quite simply couldn’t get enough of each other. If we weren’t making love, we were thinking about it, alluding to it, or suggesting it. It probably wasn’t very seemly behaviour for people of our age, but even if we’d thought about it, we wouldn’t have cared. Even when we seemed to have finally blunted the edge of imperative need, and some kind of rationality returned, we didn’t break the pattern we had created. It didn’t matter if he stayed in London with me, or if I drove down to Lychford to stay at Greylands - either way we were together every night. If he was an addiction, then I wanted to remain an addict until the day I died, it was that simple.

 

                We started to get to know each other properly again. He really was, I discovered, more calm and reflective than his younger self had been. He still had that same spark about him, but the added years had brought a little more tranquillity to Steed. Perhaps he had finally managed to reconcile some of his demons, but for whatever reason, he was calmer, far less edgy than he had been. Back in the ‘sixties, when Steed had walked into a room, he had always managed to bring with him a certain volatile energy. He retained the same puissance, the same aura of tightly reined, disciplined aggression, but he’d lost the scent of potential violence that I’d always detected in the past. I found him deeply congenial company, found that he’d lost none of his charismatic charm, none of his wry humour. If I hadn’t already been in love with him, I would certainly have been so after those first few days.

 

                When the weekend came, I joined him at Greylands, thoroughly enjoying not only the company, but the refined, expensive surroundings. I met his two assistants from the Department, Purdey, the pretty blonde that I had met briefly on my first visit, and Gambit, a tall, brashly humorous young man. Both of them seemed slightly in awe of me, which was mildly unnerving, but they were pleasant and friendly, and seemed to understand at least something of the bond between myself and Steed.

 

                We were inseparable that weekend. Inseparable, and glad to be so. We talked and we walked, we went riding and we made love. However trite it might have been, we basked in the idyll. Perhaps prematurely, I thought about the future, dared to dream that we would spend it together. If we had been lucky enough to have been given a second chance, then we could only thank whatever powers there were, and seize that chance with both hands. I couldn’t envisage ever leaving his side again. John Steed might not have been the perfect man, but he was perfect for me, whatever his flaws and foibles.

 

                “You will look into this Signet business for me, won’t you?” I asked him on the Sunday evening as we ambled through the grounds.

 

                “Of course, if it’ll help to reassure you,” he said, then shrugged and added, “But I’m sure it’s all perfectly legitimate.”

 

                We wandered through the stableyard, and it was my idea to tug him into the barn where the bales of hay and straw were neatly stacked, my idea to kiss him deeply and lingeringly while I massaged his groin, feeling him hardening with flattering alacrity. Entirely my idea to unzip his trousers and ease his burgeoning manhood free. Knowing we were completely alone, he didn’t even begin to protest, not when I stroked him deftly and meaningfully, not when I pushed him back into the straw and loomed over him, driven by lascivious impatience.

 

                He moaned when I kissed his rigid penis, moaned in feral desire and pushed his fingers into my hair, holding my head surprisingly gently. I kissed him, licked him, sucked him, worshipped him. A freely given gift of love and devotion. We made love there in the barn, as giddy and reckless as teenagers, and just as rampant. We were together and we were in love. We’d survived the past, and nothing else could part us.

 

-oOo-

 

                Henry Chambers had been my accountant for years, and I trusted him implicitly. If he and Steed had ever put forward completely opposite views on something, I would have been desperately torn between them, I trusted Henry so much. On the subject of the Signet Trust in general, and Lodestone in particular, he was reassuring, telling me, “Emma, Lodestone has invested in Knight since the ‘sixties, you know that. They have a ten percent share in Knight Holdings, and a five percent share in Knight Industries. That must tell you something.”

 

                “Oh, it does. I know I should have more faith in this deal, but... I can’t explain it. It’s just a feeling.”

 

                “I would never disparage your intuition, my dear, but I think your concern is ill-founded on this occasion. The Signet Trust is thoroughly reputable. They aren’t doing anything that one wouldn’t expect from any other parent company. Fenton-Chase is a gentleman of the old school.”

 

                Surprised, I asked, “You know him, Henry?”

 

                “By reputation only, really. Though I have met him. Janet and I went to a party at his house a year or so ago. Lively affair.”

 

                “I thought he was something of a recluse?”

 

                “A recluse? Good Lord, no. Publicity-shy, maybe. Certainly not reclusive. Thoroughly decent chap, by all accounts.”

 

                Slightly reassured by his assessment of the enigmatic Fenton-Chase, I said, “Well, I trust your judgement, Henry. Although, I’d be happier if I could meet him myself. He’s an elusive character.”

 

                “Emma, my dear, the wealthier one is, the less interest one has to invest in one’s daily business affairs. Fenton-Chase has an admirably efficient staff. I don’t think he’s been near his office for years. I rather envy him. He seems to spend most of his time escorting scandalously beautiful women and breeding equally beautiful horses.”

 

                I snorted slightly, “Sounds like someone else of my acquaintance.”

 

                “Given the choice between spending my time at Greylands,” Henry said, “or spending it in London, I know which I’d choose. One really can’t blame the man.”

 

                Greylands.

 

                The word burning into my mind, I stared at Henry in numb, cold shock. Greylands. I could picture the house, the estate, the stables, so clearly in my mind. A little hoarsely, I finally said, “That’s where he lives? Fenton-Chase?”

 

                “Mm. Charming country house. Regency. The Signet Trust is obviously doing remarkably well.”

 

                Obviously. So well that it could afford to prop up Knight Industries.

 

-oOo-

 

                Arthur Fenton-Chase had died in nineteen twenty-five, aged just three months. Somerset House provided me with a copy of his death certificate. Pneumonia. He had been born just outside Swindon, and his death had been registered in the same office as his birth. Somewhere, I assumed, there was probably a sad little memorial, a tiny, weathered gravestone. Fifty-two years dead, little Arthur Fenton-Chase, an innocent child who’s identity had been borrowed... stolen... by someone who had needed to shroud his own. A British passport had been issued to the bearer of Arthur Fenton-Chase’s birth certificate in ‘fifty-three. A passport that had, presumably, virtually sealed the legitimacy of the whole sorry business. Childs’ play to someone as wily as Steed. Fenton-Chase had provided him with an almost impenetrable alias for business use.

 

                Steed owned the Signet Trust, and therefore Lodestone. And Lodestone had owned part of both Knight Holdings and Knight Industries since the ‘sixties. Steed had been my business partner for years, and I hadn’t known it.

 

                Lodestone was offering Knight the lifeline it needed to survive. Now I knew why.

 

-oOo-

 

                “Oil,” I said crisply, deliberately keeping my distance from him, “Isn’t that where Signet made it’s money?”

 

                Steed seemed to sense that there was something amiss, but he shrugged slightly as he poured fine cognac into crystal glasses. “Apparently so. Nothing strange about that. A lot of companies struck it very rich out in the Middle East.”

 

                “Yes. Not very many British companies, though, it has to be said. Fenton-Chase must either be a very good businessman, or the wielder of considerable influence where it counts.”

 

                Oman had been a British protectorate, and even when it established independence, it had retained strong links with it’s former overlord. British-educated, most of it’s Royal family, with many British advisors. Some of those advisors could almost have been termed mercenaries. Mercenaries who had been amply rewarded for their part in maintaining the status quo in unsettled times. Polite euphemisms didn’t alter the truth. Steed had spent several years in the Middle East in the ‘fifties, and he’d come home a wealthy man. It wasn’t difficult to guess the role that a former British army officer had played in the Royal household.

 

                “Maybe,” Steed said easily, refusing to be drawn on the subject of Arthur Fenton-Chase. “Cognac, Mrs. Peel?”

 

                “Chambers, my accountant,” I said, childishly not thanking him as I took the glass, “knows him, you know. Fenton-Chase.”

 

                “Oh?” Steed said, not sounding either interested or concerned.

 

                “Yes. A very respectable gentleman, so I’m told.” I studied him over the rim of my glass. He had tremendous composure, I’d give him that.

 

                “Well, there you are, then. I told you I didn’t think there was anything to worry about, didn’t I? If I were you, Mrs. Peel, I’d just sign the contract, take the money and run.”

 

                “I don’t think so,” I said, preparing to play my trump card. “You see, it doesn’t sound like good business sense to me.”

 

                “Why on earth not?”

 

                “Perhaps I’m being foolish, but I’d really rather deal with the living. Arthur Fenton-Chase died in infancy over fifty years ago.”

 

-oOo-

 

                He stood in front of my car, and when I reversed, he stood in the centre of the drive, barring the way. With trees on either side, I couldn’t quite swerve round him. I wasn’t feeling very charitable towards him, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to run him down. I revved the engine angrily, impatiently, but he didn’t step aside. Just stood there in the glare of my headlights, feet braced apart, arms hanging loosely. I knew just by looking at the set of his jaw that he wasn’t going to move.

 

                I wound down the window and snapped, “Get out of my way, Steed, or I’ll run you over.”

 

                “No you won’t,” he said, barely audible over my angry revving.

 

                Damn the man, I thought. It would serve him right if I did clip him with my car. It was a test of nerve, his against mine. I let the clutch out and drove towards him, trusting in his ability to jump out of the way with the alacrity of a cat. He didn’t move. The gap was closing, and my car’s headlights must have been dazzling him, but he didn’t move. At the very last moment, my nerve failed. It had more to do with faith in Steed’s stubborn stupidity than in cowardice. Steed, after all, had won the Military Cross for running straight towards a German machine-gun post under heavy fire. You couldn’t win against that kind of insane courage. I braked hard, and the car skidded a little on the loose gravel of the drive, but it stopped a foot away from him.

 

                _Bastard._ Arrogant, deceitful, mendacious bastard.

 

                “If you’d give me a chance to explain...?” He called, a patently falsely cheerful note in his voice.

 

                “No.” I said curtly, and reversed back hard, tyres spinning on the gravel.

 

                I knew Steed. Eventually, given enough time, he could talk his way out of anything. It was a skill that had helped keep him alive for a long, long time in an absurdly dangerous profession. I knew myself. Eventually, given enough time, I’d be thanking him for what he’d done, instead of cursing him for it. He might have had to forgive me for one monstrous transgression, but over the time we’d been friends, I’d forgiven him for a thousand misdemeanours, a thousand careless, thoughtless acts, a thousand half-truths. Forgiven him, and gone on forgiving him, because I’d always believed that he was, fundamentally, a good and decent man who would never deceive me in anything that mattered.

 

                Even when I’d caught him red-handed in some illicit flirtation with a pretty girl, even when I’d found out he’d used me as bait in a trap, even when I’d found out that he was not altogether the gentleman he appeared, I’d forgiven him.

 

                I couldn’t forgive him such a huge deception. Couldn’t forgive him for trying to buy me.

 

                “Emma...?” He called in a slightly wheedling tone.

 

                There was a slightly wider gap to the left of him. It would mean driving up onto the grass, but if I was careful, I should just miss the graceful poplar almost abreast of him. My cousin Andrew taught me to drive, in the late ‘fifties, and Andrew had been something of an amateur racing driver before a wife and three children had sobered him.

 

                Knight Industries owed something of it’s survival to Steed. To Steed, who had ploughed his money into Knight out of... out of what? Friendship? Concern? Love? Pity?

 

                I had been prepared for Steed to hate me for going back to Peter, but I didn’t think I could bear to live with his pity.

 

                I accelerated forwards, heading grimly for the gap between Steed and the poplar tree, certain that he’d jump away, and certain that even if he didn’t, I’d pass him with inches to spare. I wasn’t travelling fast, but it was fast enough for the car to skid slightly when I yanked the steering wheel round with the intention of veering up onto the grass verge. Too sharp a turn on the loose surface. I controlled the skid instinctively, concentrating on not hitting the tree. There was a dull thud from the vicinity of the nearside front wing, and I knew even before my head whipped round that I’d hit him.

 

                More than once during the war, Steed had jumped out of low-flying aeroplanes into occupied territory. It might have been more than thirty years before, but he evidently still had the instinct for it, because I saw him roll when he hit the surface of the drive, evidently trying to absorb much of the impact. I knew I hadn’t hit him hard enough or fast enough to have killed him, but the sheer horror of that sickening thud, and the sight of him rolling across the gravel was enough to make me break fiercely. Again, the car slid, but mercifully it came to a gentle halt, one wheel on the grass.

 

                Whatever spell had been driving me was broken. Cold, rational thought returned, edged by a real fear and guilt. I jumped out of the car with more speed and less dignity than I’d demonstrated for years and ran across the gravel to where he was lying. He was already moving feebly, reassuring me that he wasn’t dead, just badly winded and obviously shaken. The smart houndstooth jacket would never be the same again, and I suspected that the cavalry twill trousers were beyond repair, but Steed himself was sitting up slowly, looking more startled than angry, more bewildered than injured.

 

                “I’m sorry,” I gabbled at him, “the car skidded... are you all right?”

 

                In the light of the car’s headlights, his grey eyes looked even more wintry than normal, and his tone was even icier as he replied, “There don’t appear to be any bones broken, Mrs. Peel. Thank you so much for asking.”

 

                Impasse. We glared at each other like feuding alley cats, both obviously feeling righteously enraged.

 

                “How could you?” I demanded, “How could you, Steed?”

 

                He was rubbing his leg with both hands. There was a graze on his temple, another on his cheekbone, a cut on his jaw. He looked up at me balefully, said shortly, “I didn’t think it was a capital offence.”

 

                “My company, Steed. Mine. Don’t you understand what that means to me? What that has always meant to me? You illicitly bought into my company under an assumed name, and didn’t tell me. How do you think that makes me feel? All these years... How could you?”

 

                “Don’t you think you’re over-reacting?” Steed asked coldly. “What difference does it make who owns Lodestone? Has Lodestone ever tried to interfere with the running of Knight?”

 

                “That’s not the point... it’s the deceit.”

 

                He got to his feet. Slowly, it had to be said. As befitted a man of over fifty who had just been side-swiped by a car. Dusting himself down he said quietly, “Are you trying to imply that my money isn’t as good as anyone else’s?”

 

                “You were trying to buy me, Steed!”

 

                “I was doing no such thing.”

 

                I glowered at him and he glowered back. We hadn’t often fought in the course of our friendship, but when we had... Irresistible force meets immovable object. Steed was as stubborn as I was, he just hid it better. As stubborn and as proud. We’d only butted heads once or twice, and there hadn’t been a decisive winner on either occasion. The cut on his jaw was bleeding sluggishly. Too many conflicting emotions warred inside me. I was angry with him... furious with him... but I loved him. I didn’t like him very much at that moment, but I still loved him. I wished I didn’t.

 

                “Sell me your shares,” I demanded, “I’ll buy them from you at the current market price.”

 

                “Oh? And where, pray, do you intend to find the money to do that?”

 

                I’d slapped Steed once, years ago. The look in his eyes then had told me that I’d be exceedingly foolish to try it a second time. Instinct told me to slap him, common sense told me it was a very, very bad idea. I restrained myself. Instead, I said coldly, “Boorish of you, Steed. Don’t concern yourself, I can get the money.”

 

                A short, tense pause, then he raised his chin a fraction and said dismissively, “As you like, Mrs. Peel. Now, if there’s nothing else you’d care to discuss, I’ll wish you goodnight.”

 

                So typical of him to retreat into gentlemanly disdain. Disdain that was certainly intended to be arrogant.

 

                Two could play at that game. “I can’t think of anything else I’d be willing to say to you at this point except goodnight.”

 

                “Then goodnight it is,” he said, and turned sharply on his heel, walking past me, past my car and up the drive towards the grand house. We were as bad as each other. The tragedy was that there was no-one in a position to bang our heads together.

 

-oOo-

 

                “Emma,” Victoria said, in a tone that sounded patronising but probably wasn’t intended to be, “you’ve always had too much stubborn pride. Even when we were children you wouldn’t admit to ever being wrong.”

 

                “I’m not wrong.”

 

                “Impetuous, then.”

 

                Victoria was my maternal cousin, Andrew’s younger sister. We hadn’t been particularly close until a few years before, when she had been going through a divorce at exactly the same time that I had. Circumstance had drawn us together, and we’d found that we had far more in common than we had ever realised in our younger days. We’d become firm friends in the intervening time, and perhaps because she was family, Victoria dared to say things to me that no-one else did. She was the only person to whom I had relayed the entire sorry story of myself and Steed, of the love affair that had been so good and had ended so tragically, of the newly dawned hope, and now of the trouble between us.

 

                I put my glass down with unnecessary force, “Don’t tell me you think I’m in the wrong?”

 

                “I think you both are,” Victoria said mildly. “Steed might simply have done the wrong thing for all the right reasons. I’m sure you have every right to be angry with him... but this animosity between you is quite, quite ridiculous.”

 

                “Thanks.” I said sardonically.

 

                “Well. For heaven’s sake, Emma. One moment you’re carrying on as if you’ve been reunited with the one and only great love of your life, the next moment you’re telling me you ran the poor man down. In his own drive.”

 

                “It was an accident.”

 

                “I’m sure it was. I’d hate to think any cousin of mine would do a thing like that deliberately. Do you love him, or don’t you?”

 

                I blinked. “Of course I do.”

 

                “If you love someone, you forgive them. Certainly for something like this. I would have thought that you, of all people, would understand that.”

 

                I knew exactly what she meant, and retorted, “Don’t try and bring Peter into this.”

 

                “True, though, isn’t it? Steed forgave you for walking out on him, and now you’re behaving as if you can’t forgive him for what may simply have been a very bad error of judgement.”

 

                Too damned perceptive, my cousin. And far too forthright. I sighed and shook my head, “It’s just... Oh, I don’t know... All these years, and he never once gave me the slightest hint. It’s as if he wanted to own part of me.”

 

                “Perhaps he did. Or perhaps he’s just an astute businessman who decided to take advantage of inside information. Your father knew what he was doing when he expanded Knight, and you’ve followed admirably in his footsteps. Maybe things have got harder in the last few years, but you’re a fighter Emma, and if anyone can keep the company going... Steed obviously had enough faith in you to put money into Knight. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

 

                “I still see it as more than a minor deception.”

 

                “And you’re willing to throw away something that evidently makes you happy because you won’t discuss things with him? Stubborn pride, like I say. That’s a Knight trait if ever there was one.”

 

-oOo-

 

                Stubborn pride might have been a Knight family trait, but if it was, it was also a Steed family trait. Four days of pointed silence passed between us, while my staff and Signet’s staff arranged the necessary details. On the fifth day, Steed himself arrived at Knight’s office to sign away his interests in my company. It hadn’t been easy, raising the loans to buy back the piece of me that he owned, and in doing so, I knew I’d lost my last chance to successfully tender for the Hunter Project, but pride had driven me to ruthless determination. Cutting off my nose to spite my face, my grandmother would have called it.

 

                The sight of him striding into my office tightened the muscles in my stomach, tautened my spine. Bowler and umbrella in one hand, briefcase in the other, he could easily have passed for an accountant or a banker. Even in the heart of my admittedly contracted empire, he seemed to dominate the room with his presence. I saw, quite distinctly, the way my young and pretty secretary kept glancing at him. It didn’t seem to occur to her that he was at least thirty years her senior, that he might well have been older than her father. Steed always had managed to have that effect on women. Not that I blamed Lucy at all. Impeccably dressed, perfectly groomed, he looked exactly what he was - a mature, virile and handsome man. The healing abrasions on his face and the imposing bruising that ran from temple to jaw only served to add a certain sense of exciting mystery to the general impression.

 

                Leaning over the desk, the contract before him, the witnesses poised, Steed looked up at me. His expression was enigmatic, his eyes unreadable. Quietly, he said, “Are you sure?”

 

                For a moment, as I stared straight into his eyes, I felt as if we were the only people in the room. Was I sure?

 

                I had thought I was, but...

 

                ...But looking into his eyes, I realised how foolish I was being. I was still angry with him for the deception, but Victoria’s words were haunting me, _“...Steed obviously had enough faith in you to put money into Knight...”_ \- and he had, hadn’t he? Through all the years, he’d kept his stake in Knight. Lodestone had done deals with us that had proved mutually beneficial, and now, when I really needed a company I could trust to back Knight, I was committing a sin that my father would have found unpardonable - letting pride get in the way of good business sense.

 

                Steed straightened up, put his fountain pen back into the inside pocket of his jacket. Holding my gaze, he said simply, “I’ve changed my mind. I want the accountants to look at the figures again.”

 

                Steed knew all about saving face. He understood pride, and the trouble it could cause, every bit as well as I did. Not for the first time in our friendship, he was saving me from myself.

 

                I found my voice, said steadily, “I think we should discuss this in private, Mr Fenton-Chase.”

 

                A slight incline of the dark head, “By all means, Miss Knight.”

 

-oOo-

 

                As the door closed behind Richard Markham, leaving us alone, I sat myself down behind my desk, putting a physical barrier between us. More than a little awkwardly, I asked, “How are the bruises?”

 

                Steed settled himself on the edge of the desk, the nonchalance masking... what? Mildly, he replied, “Vibrantly coloured.”

 

                “I’m sorry.” I said, perfectly sincerely. “It was an accident, I swear.”

 

                “Mrs. Peel, I can’t say that I’ve ever thought of you as the kind of woman who would run a man over deliberately. Throw him over your shoulder or kick him in the shin, perhaps...” A long, rather quizzical look, then, “Truce?”

 

                “Armed truce.”

 

                “Dinner?”

 

                I shook my head, “I haven’t forgiven you.”

 

                Steed folded his arms over his broad chest. When he spoke, the bantering note had vanished from his voice, “The stipend of a field agent is far from great, Mrs. Peel.”

 

                “I know that,” I told him rather shortly, “but you could easily live within your means if you chose to.”

 

                “It isn’t a crime to have a private income, you know.”

 

                “True. Though in your case, it may be only barely legal.”

 

                “It was my broker who suggested Knight as a good proposition, Mrs. Peel. Solid, reputable company with a decent annual profit. Not to mention an exceptionally talented and determined Managing Director. It was a sound business decision.”

 

                “And one you found it unnecessary to discuss with me, apparently. Why, Steed?”

 

                A shrug of those broad shoulders, “It seemed... inappropriate... to sully our friendship with talk of something as distasteful as money.”

 

                I actually believed him. I wouldn’t have believed anyone else, but I believed Steed, because I knew exactly what he was like. A gentleman of the old school, isn’t that what Henry Chambers had said about Steed’s alter-ego, Fenton-Chase? Steed had never discussed money with me. Never. There hadn’t been any need. We’d both been wealthy enough to enjoy life without counting the cost. Wealthy enough to avoid the subject altogether. He had never asked me anything about Knight’s finances, and I’d never asked him about his.

 

                Carefully, I asked, “Do you understand why I’m angry about it, Steed?”

 

                A thoughtful sort of look, “I believe so, yes.”

 

                “To find, after all these years, that you’ve been ploughing money into Knight...”

 

                “Investing in Knight,” he corrected, “I’ve had a handsome return on my money, over the years.”

 

                _But not,_ I added silently _, just recently._ Which had to be one of the root causes of my anger. Steed knew my financial troubles rather better than I would ever have wanted him to. It was... embarrassing. Humiliating. Hadn’t I always wanted to appear to be perfect in his eyes? The perfect businesswoman, the perfect partner... the perfect lover? Just as I had wanted to be the perfect daughter to my father. And the perfect successor. My father’s only child... a daughter, not the son he had always wanted. I’d done everything possible to prove to my father that I was as worthy - more worthy - than a son would have been. I’d succeeded, too. My father had adored me, had been fiercely proud of me. Just as Steed had.

 

                I’d never thought of him as a father figure. Never. A surrogate older brother, perhaps, from time to time, but never a father, regardless of the difference in our ages. Yet in some ways, hadn’t my relationship with John Knight moulded my relationship with John Steed? Both powerful, impressive men, both stubborn and single-minded, often opinionated, both equally as well-respected as they were feared. Both capable of being inordinately gentle, despite their ferocious reputations. I’d wanted so much to live up to the expectations of both of them... and now I felt that I had failed them both.

 

                Why both to cling to meagre scraps of pride when I’d already lost so much?

 

                “The Hunter Project,” I said carefully, “could reverse the downtrend. If Knight successfully tenders... Well, everything could be so different.”

 

                “And your bank,” Steed guessed correctly, “won’t take the risk?”

 

                “Evidently not.”

 

                Silence. Where had things gone wrong? I had been so optimistic, so sure that we could pick up the pieces and start again. But it didn’t seem as if it was to be. Why had I ever imagined that it could?

 

                Steed removed himself from my desk and settled into the chair opposite mine, the desk lying between us. Ever the chameleon, he looked perfectly at home there. I gazed at him, wishing myself ten years back in time. Despite everything, things had been good then. I’d been a vibrant young woman hungry for excitement, and Steed had been the catalyst I’d needed. We’d had such good times, back in the ‘sixties. Ridiculously dangerous times, some of them, but exciting... fun. Even risking life and limb had been fun. In a perverse sort of way.

 

                “Lodestone,” he said calmly, as if he was talking about the weather, “will underwrite the Hunter Project. Every penny of it.”

 

                “No.”

 

                He steepled his fingers, a very un-Steedlike mannerism. “I am, amongst other things, a businessman. Not by choice, admittedly, but a businessman nonetheless. You say you can make a success of the Hunter, and I see no reason to disbelieve you. You have the facilities and the technical expertise, I have the money. It’s a golden opportunity for both of us.”

 

                Richard would have strangled me if he’d been there, because my immediate response was, “No. I’m not in the market for charity.”

 

                “And I’m not looking to bestow it. Lodestone will provide the money, Knight will provide the facilities and the appropriate research staff, engineers and whatever else is needed. Lodestone will fund you - but only for a healthy share of the profits.”

 

                Oh, yes. Steed knew all about saving face. But he was right - it was a golden opportunity.

 

-oOo-

 

                Reconciliation - true reconciliation - was, I think, a benediction for us both. We argued a lot, we sulked a lot, but in the end we both accepted that we were better together than we were apart. When everything else was set aside, the simple fact was that Steed and I loved each other. Truly loved each other. Enough to surmount all the difficulties, enough to lay all the ghosts to rest.

 

                One night, one long, memorable night, he started to talk to me. I watched him work his way through a bottle of brandy, and the more he drank, the more he talked. Lucidly, mainly, about himself, about his thoughts and aspirations - even about all the things that had always been taboo. He told me things I had never even guessed about. Told me some horror stories that made me ache for him. He talked until there was only one thing left to say, and whether he was drunk or not, he sounded sober as he said, “You broke my heart. I thought I was totally invulnerable, but you broke my damned heart.”

 

                What could I say to him? We’d talked about Peter before. I’d tried to explain on many occasions, but mostly Steed had cut me short. Peter’s name was anathema to him. He had preferred to mouth words of forgiveness than to discuss the matter properly. Sitting on the big couch in the middle of the living room at Greylands, all I could do was rest my head on his chest and whisper softly, “I’m sorry, Steed. I’m so, so sorry. I never meant to. I love you. I loved you then, and I love you now.”

 

                And that was it. That was the end of it. It was as if that final night, when everything spilled out of him, purged him of everything.

 

                We went to bed at five in the morning, and didn’t stir until noon. When we woke, we made love. And it was love. Love, not sex. A pact was formed then that both of us knew was forever. We never had been a conventional couple, and probably never would be, but from then on we were a couple. An open and honest couple who were recognised as such. I loved him, he loved me, and nothing else mattered, because everything else was trivia.

 

                I’d learned my lesson. And because I’d learned it, fate had given me back the one thing I’d wanted more than anything else. All it took was an apology. Hard to believe, but true. I’d left him once. I had no intention of ever leaving him again. The die, as they say, was cast.

 

-oOo-

 

               

**EPILOGUE**

 

                To the chagrin of her mother, and secret delight of her father, Amanda Steed turned her back on Knight-Lodestone Industries even before she was due to take the helm. She finished her degree and left Oxford to trek through the foothills of the Himalayas. For a time, she dabbled in engineering in Saudi Arabia. She went to Egypt and lived in Cairo with a much older man, finally leaving to tour Africa in a dented, ageing Landrover. Her mother fretted, not about her safety, but about her fecklessness. Her father didn’t say very much at all, just smiled ironically sometimes.

 

                When Amanda returned to England, she found her younger brother Matthew in sole command of Knight-Lodestone. Rumour had it that he ruled with a rod of iron, but whatever his tactics, the company’s annual profits continued to soar. She found, to her surprise, that Greylands, her childhood home, had been sold, lock, stock and barrel. Amanda had never thought for a moment that her father, a stickler for tradition, would leave Greylands until he was carried from it in a wooden box. She was startled to discover that her parents had bought property both in the South of France, something that could only have been her mother’s idea, and in Hampshire.

 

                Her mother painted and sculpted, and wrote impressive articles for scientific journals. Her father bred and trained horses, and... Well, who knew what else Amanda’s father did? Whatever it was, it necessitated occasional extended jaunts abroad, and paid handsomely. Amanda had learned as a small child not to ask her father awkward questions. Whenever she did, he just smiled and said very little.

 

                Amanda admired both her parents, an admiration that had been hard won during her years away from England. Admired and loved them, just as she admired and loved her little brother. If anyone ever called her a black sheep, Amanda simply shrugged her lithe shoulders and murmured that she took after her father.

 

                There were those in Internal Security who still remembered John Steed. Vividly. Michael Gambit, head of D19, could only agree when people said that the most successful of the young field agents under his command was too like her father for anyone’s good. Could only agree, and shake his head in wry amusement. Just as he did every time he had to reprimand the young woman for her impatience, her insolence and her disobedience.

 

**-the end-**

 

 


End file.
